Medieval Women’s Writing

Question 1

Community in “Mad Dogs and Englishmen”?

Answer 1

• The “natives” vs the “white men”: A distinction that implies and revolves around inequality
• Peoples of completely different ethnic, religious, cultural background are grouped together: Japanese, Chinese, Hindus (religion, not nationality), Burmese, Thai, Bengali…
• People and animals represented as having the same reaction to the English:
• “the toughest Burmese bandit can never understand it”
• “the smallest Malay rabbit deplores this foolish habit”
• Stereotypical images associated with the diverse peoples subsumed under the heading of the “Eastern eyes”:
• Siesta, hats like plates, the natives swoon
• Simple creatures (human and non-human) that are essentially work-shy; conniving to laugh at the English

Question 2

What is Colonialism?

Answer 2

• one historically specific experience of how imperialism can work through the act of settlement
• Colonialism is closely related to capitalism & globalization: “Colonialism was a lucrative commercial operation, bringing wealth and riches to Western nations through the economic exploitation of others”.

Question 3

What is Imperialism?

Answer 3

An ideology used to legitimize the domination & exploitation of others, to extend country’s power & influence

Question 4

Decolonization

Answer 4

In British imperial history, three phases:
- 1776: United States Declaration of Independence
- Late 19th/early 20th century: White settler colonies (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa) become ‘dominions’
- Decades following end of World War II: South(east) Asian, African and Caribbean colonies achieve independence, often following violent anti-colonial struggle

Question 5

What is Postcolonialism?

Answer 5

• Historical experiences of decolonization in 20th century: post-colonialism
• Intellectual developments in second half of 20th century: postcolonialism, a way of reading
• 20th century as “century of colonial demise, and of decolonization for millions of people who were once subject to the authority of the British crown”.
• This also had an impact on the production & study of literature.

Question 6

Postcolonial Literature

Answer 6

• Edward Saïd: Orientalism (1978)
• Gayatri C. Spivak: “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography” (1985)
• Homi K. Bhabha: The Location of Culture (1994)

Question 7

Theories of colonial discourses

Answer 7

“explore the ways that representations and modes of perception are used as fundamental weapons of colonial power to keep colonized peoples subservient to colonial rule”

Question 8

Community and ‘Otherness’

Answer 8

• Otherness is due less to the difference of the Other than to the point of view and the discourse of the person who perceives the Other as such. Opposing Us, the Self, and Them, the Other, is to choose a criterion that allows humanity to be divided into two groups: one that embodies the norm and whose identity is valued and another that is defined by its faults, devalued and susceptible to discrimination.
• Only dominant groups […] are in a position to impose their categories […].
• Otherness is related to space.
• The creation of otherness (also called othering) consists of applying a principle that allows individuals to be classified into two hierarchical groups: them and us. The out-group is only coherent as a group as a result of its opposition to the in-group and its [supposed] lack of identity. The in-group constructs one or more others, setting itself apart and giving itself an identity. […] The asymmetry in power relationships is central to the construction of otherness. Only the dominant group is in a position to impose the value of its particularity (its identity) and to devalue the particularity of others (their otherness) while imposing corresponding discriminatory measures.
• Otherness and identity are two inseparable sides of the same coin. The Other only exists in relation to the Self, and vice versa.
• The power at stake is discursive: it depends on the ability of a discourse to impose its categories. But this ability does not depend solely on the logical power of the discourse [hardly at all, I would add], but also upon the (political, social, and economic) power of those who speak it.

Question 9

Community and Violence

Answer 9

• Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London and New York: Verso, 2004.
• “[…] whether […] experiences of vulnerability and loss have to lead straightaway to military violence and retribution” (XII)
• “inevitable interdependency” (XII)
• “as the basis for global political community” (XIII)
• Thinking community along the lines of “our exposure to violence and our complicity in it, […] our vulnerability to loss and the task of mourning that follows” (19).
• Loss and vulnerability seem to follow from our being socially constituted bodies, attached to others, at risk of losing those attachments, exposed to others, at risk of violence by virtue of that exposure.
• Despite our differences in location and history, my guess is that it is possible to appeal to a “we,” for all of us have some notion of what it is to have lost somebody. Loss has made a tenuous “we” of us all. And if we have lost, then it follows that we have had, that we have desired and loved, that we have struggled to find the conditions for our desire.
• Others “live on in the fiber of the boundary that contains” us; “they haunt the way [we are] […] undone and open to becoming unbounded”.
• Therefore, we are “invariably in community, impressed upon by others, impinging upon them as well, and in ways that are not fully in [our] control or clearly predictable”.
• This way of imagining community affirms relationality not only as a descriptive or historical fact of our formation, but also as an ongoing normative dimension of our social and political lives, one in which we are compelled to take stock of our interdependence. According to this latter view, it would become incumbent on us to consider the place of violence in any such relation, for violence is, always, an exploitation of that primary tie, that primary way in which we are, as bodies, outside ourselves and for one another.

Question 10

Why did BBC cancel ‘Mad Dogs & Englishmen’?

Answer 10

• For colonial attitudes and perpetuation of stereotypes
• Old white men complaining they can’t be racist and misogynistic anymore